Gravitational Wave S6 Directed Search (CasA) launched

Submitted on 17 Jul 2013 9:24:07 UTC

After a pause of about two weeks Einstein@Home is searching for gravitational waves again. The new search application is called "Gravitational Wave S6 Directed Search (CasA)". It is the first "directed" search performed by Einstein@Home, targeting only at a single direction in the sky ("Cassiopeia A").

This search uses new data files, so be prepared for a larger initial download (>100MB).

What is the best config for computers to process all these files to the max in a short time? the new upgrade for BOINC is not compatible with WIN7 bc when I did download the new program. It wiped out all the work that was done. So, I went back and reloaded the last BOINC program in order to save and send the processed files back to SETI. And I didn't always have a reliable net connection either so too the work be 7-10 days from actual time of delivery back to the main system.

In general, we are currently only sending out very few tasks of S6CasA (about 2% of all scheduler requests will be fulfilled with S6CasA tasks). Here is why:

- We want to skim through the new Arecibo "inner galaxy" data as fast as possible, ideally before any other PALFA pipeline could claim a pulsar detection in there. Hence we directed almost all of our CPU power to the BRP4 search.

- As long as there is only little "locality" (Gravitational Wave) work in the DB, the "locality" scheduler stresses the DB quite a bit. The DB, however, is pretty loaded already with >3Mio (BRP4) tasks.

- Although the search (setup) was tested over at Albert, it may still behave differently on the lager scale and variety of hosts on Einstein. So I'm a bit reluctant to send out work in larger scale of which I'm not sure it is working, i.e. got a sufficient number of successful results back.

The preliminary plan is to raise the S6CasA work share later this week, when we have more results back of S6CasA and should be almost done with the new Arecibo data on BRP4.

We want to skim through the new Arecibo "inner galaxy" data as fast as possible, ideally before any other PALFA pipeline could claim a pulsar detection in there. Hence we directed almost all of our CPU power to the BRP4 search.

Got my first yesterday! It's got about 7 hours left out of 21....how's this task in the credit dept? I really liked the old gravitational waves projects that we just completed. They took 12 hours and built up my scores quickly...